Setting up a Gmail account for the first time (circa 2007) was exciting for me, especially because it was a free service available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Plus, it came with an unprecedented amount of storage space at the time.
Since then, Google has become a ubiquitous part of our modern lives; so much so that the name of the company itself has become a commonly-used verb. Google’s expansion has extended far beyond email, and we now entrust our most of our digital activities to the company in one way or another.
Over the years, and after numerous scary news headlines, I slowly began to pull away from Google. It’s not an easy feat, especially for us who were deeply integrated into the ecosystem — but also because the company has always offered really great tools and services, often setting the standard for others to follow.
But today my online life is entirely separated from Google in the ways that count the most, and it’s something that most people can reasonably achieve to whatever degree they feel comfortable with. If you’re on the fence about leaving Google (mostly) behind, I’ll detail some reasons that may compel you to take the plunge.
Cutting Off The Supply
Google found unimaginable success through the harvesting and selling of user data to third-party advertisers. The processes and mechanics of this all have only become more complex throughout the years, but the underlying directive has stayed the same.
The means in which Google collects a person’s data are difficult to quantify for most people. For instance, if you use an Android device and you’re signed into your Google account, they can collect a substantial amount of data just from your daily phone usage, which is automatically sent back to their servers.
This data is then used to build a profile about you as a consumer, making it easy for them to target you directly with specific ads. It’s important to keep in mind that Google isn’t technically doing anything illegal — when we signed up for the first time and agreed with their terms and conditions, we gave them full permission to start collecting our data.
Ultimately, it’s up to you if you’re comfortable with this. Google is fairly transparent about how they collect and use your data, but they do still know a lot about you — much, much more than you’d be comfortable having a complete stranger know.
Eggs, Meet Basket
This is the argument that always made the most sense to me, and has always been the driving force behind my “degoogling” efforts.
Think about how much of your digital (and personal) life is reliant on having a working Google account. From your photos and videos, your contacts, calendar, and notes, and all of the work that you do on Workspace: you rely wholeheartedly on Google. Many also rely on Chrome’s built-in sync functionality and password manager, or use their Gmail to automatically log in to most of the sites and services that they use.
Within the privacy circles, this is often called “putting all your eggs in one basket”, and it’s all about the long-reaching implications of what would happen if that basket were to be dropped. Just a few years ago, losing access to my Google account would have been an utter catastrophe; I would have had to have started completely fresh: new accounts, new email, new everything.
Considering the sheer amount of people that use Google on a daily basis, random account suspensions are obviously not that common, otherwise we’d likely be reading new stories about it every day; but they can and do happen.
It’s about weighing up the consequences of what were to happen to your life if you were suddenly unable to use your Google account.
Controlling Your Own Data
I want to preface this by saying that Google is very clear when it comes to intellectual property rights: whatever you create using their services belongs to you. This is great, and it means that you don’t have to worry about the company stealing any of your ideas or works.
But, at the end of the day, you are still putting all of your data on to someone else’s computer. It doesn’t matter if the “computer” in question here is actually a massive data centre; what matters is that to a certain degree, you are giving up what happens to the data that you entrust to Google.
It becomes scary when we consider that there are quite a few horror stories floating around about data being corrupted in Google Drive, which is why it’s so important to never rely on a single backup solution for your most precious files. Most people I know rely solely on Google Drive and Photos for the majority of their backups. What makes this worse is that Google’s customer support is notoriously unreliable for both free and paid accounts, and it can be impossible to get a hold of a real person to talk to.
Today my data is backed up locally and through a few trusted providers, and if one backup were to be lost or be corrupted, I know that I could easily retrieve my data from a different backup — the peace of mind alone is worth it, especially for old photos and videos that I can’t afford to lose.
It’s The Best Time To Start
Considering its size and influence, I don’t believe that Google is quite as “evil” as many people make it out to be. This seems to be changing with recent revisions to their AI commitments and other notable changes, and with the current political climate in Google’s home country of the US, I feel strongly that more people should be seeking services from regions with stronger privacy laws, such as the EU.
Fortunately, there are now plenty of great alternatives to choose from, many of which offer the same level of convenience and integration as you’d expect from Google, and without the ever-present concern of having a world-spanning corporation knowing almost everything about you.